Lethal Practice (36 page)

I found the sweater I’d remembered stashing in a bureau drawer and put on the pullover. The lake, still open, stretched out darker than the night, black glass set in a shore of white. I could even see under the pines at the edge of the lawn, where an hour ago I’d huddled in the shadows and watched for signs of someone inside.

It was probably a good thing they weren’t, I thought. From the dark in the room I would have been spotted easily as I ran to the cabin.

The cut of my tracks stood out like a laceration in the moonlit snow, deep with shadow. It looked darker than before, like a line of dried blood. Not much snow had fallen since I got in. But as I watched, I let my memory wander, struggling to recall what relationship these pieces of data had one to another.

Possibly.
For some reason the word drifted into the back of my mind. The word
probably
floated in as well. Why did
possibly
and
probably
connect with the elusive numbers I was trying to recall? Three hundred? The number seemed to come out of nowhere. Three hundred what? My memory refused to divulge the source of that figure. I was ready to dismiss the silly little words as one of those trivial loops the mind can fixate on. But the loop continued to play, and the word
study
joined the others. They all swirled around like an annoying anagram that defied solution until, just as abruptly, the words settled and changed for me.
Probability. Possibility.
The chance of error of a
study.
The source of a p value.

I knew whose name I was going to find under the white bar on the code disk.

The phone rang like a scream in my ear.

I yelped without realizing it and spun around. Quickly I picked up the receiver of the phone beside the bed. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello.

“Earl, get out!” Doug shouted. “Get out now! A second set of tracks followed you in. Get out now!”

“Second tracks?”

“Don’t talk! Just get out. They’ve pulled an end run. The car that came up after the ambulance must have pulled the same maneuver the cab did with you and dropped at least one of them off at the same spot. We didn’t see it at first because of the storm. They’re coming for you through the woods.”

“Doug, I think it’s just a moose!”

There are qualities to a silence in which you know, with absolute certainty, that people have decided you’re insane. This was one of those moments.

Finally, Doug asked, “Earl, is this a code? You’re in trouble, right, and talking gibberish is meant to tip me off?”

“No, Doug, I met a moose. It followed my tracks. Hell, it led me out of the storm to the lake. It’s just a moose.” .

“I don’t believe it.”

“Christ, did you call in the cavalry yet?”

His stony silence started a rising dread he’d blown our cover, but finally, reluctantly, he said, “No, I wanted you out first.” More silence, then, “But I don’t like this.”

“How’d you just see the tracks?”

“The night binoculars are great once the snow stops.”

I knew now the computer was going to give me a name, a suspicious pattern on a schedule, but no proof. I could accuse, and arouse suspicions, but not necessarily convict. I still had to get Doug to wait. “Well, relax. It’s nothing,” I said to him. “Let’s watch a bit longer.”

There was more doubting silence on his end. “Hold it a sec,” he said.

I heard him carry on a hurried conversation with one of his guys in the truck. I could hear a snatch of Amie’s twanging. “No fuckin’ way that’s a moose track. Moose leave prints; that’s a steady human track. And it’s too fresh. Dr. Garnet’s tracks are already half covered, barely visible. These couldn’t be more than an hour old. Get the idiot out of there.”

Arnie had hunted both men and animals. He was edgy. As I listened, I found my mouth going dry. I involuntarily pressed my back to the wall. I peered across the dim room and out the window to the dark trees where my path left the forest.

Upstairs the clatter of the printer abruptly stopped. A shutter thumped the wall in another part of the house. The logs creaked in the wind, and a puff of snow flew against the panes of glass across the room from me. The printer sputtered to life again in the distance. It must be almost finished.

Doug came back on and diplomatically translated. “Uh, we got a serious difference of opinion here. Look, I want you out of there till we sort it out. Have you got that dinky little portable phone that works near the house?”

I’d bought it for work in the garden. Doug had borrowed it during projects here in the old days before he got the cellular.

“Yeah, I got it. What are the two watchers up to?”

“Nothing. Just sitting there.”

“If someone else is on the way in, how’d they know I was here?”

“I don’t know! Look, just get out of there. Go up and hide in the cliffs behind the cabin. We’ll watch these turkeys here. If they move or anyone shows up where you are, we call the cavalry. Phone me when you’re outside, to check that your cheap walkie-talkie talks.”

In a flash I saw what we’d forgotten. “My tracks! They’ll see my new tracks heading out again and follow them right to where I’m hiding.” Even though I’d decided to be a decoy, I thought I’d have control of when I’d allow them to see me. Then I could have timed it to happen just before the cops arrived. The Holi Mont police were about ten minutes away, and we’d told them to come in without sirens when they got our call. But now, instead of dodging the killers for a few minutes, hopefully long enough for them to incriminate themselves, I might be at their mercy a lot longer, no matter how quickly the police got there.

Doug’s silence confirmed he hadn’t thought of this either, even with his safer version of our plan. We were improvising now, and our scheme, either way, was coming apart.

“Earl,” he said urgently, “it’s gotta be that you head up the cliffs and watch for them from there or I call the cops now and scare them off.” He let this sink in, then added, “It’s your call.”

I was getting scared, but leaving these killers free frightened me more. If the secret of the bar graph was what I thought it was, my “accidental death” was not only to keep me from trying to expose a mass murderer, it was to allow the killings to continue. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll hide in the cliffs, but we wait and watch. I’ll call you when I’m outside.”

“Remember, take off through the woods back toward the highway as soon as we call the cops. They’ll probably check out the cabin first before they start tracking you again. If the cops get here fast, we might even trap them while they’re still in the house.” But he sounded pretty tense about our prospects.

“Okay,” I answered, “but did anyone ever call you cheeky and bossy?”

“Wait till you see my bill.” He hung up.

The click that ended the call stuttered and became a dial tone. The drone was unpleasant, like a fly in my ear. I’d wanted to tell him what I’d found on the computer and whose name I expected to reveal with the identity code in case anything happened to me. I decided I’d call him back as soon as I was safely outside.

I glanced back at my outside track through the windows.

How did they get on my trail, get a car up here, and replicate my slow drop-off?

I visualized rolling out of the cab; the hollow was completely invisible to the rest of the road. Hell, I saw the dimming taillights of the departing cab go out of sight over the rise between the watching ambulance and me. They couldn’t have seen me.

As I stood in the darkness looking out, I replayed the image of the departing cab. In my mind I saw the shadow of the driver hunched over the dashboard, then taillights.

Suddenly I had it: The dash. The radio. The ambulance must have been monitoring the cabbie when he’d radioed in. He probably mentioned dropping off some lunatic in the woods. The ambulance driver would have realized it was me. And now they were coming in the same way.

I moved away from the window and turned toward the hallway. The portable phone was at the other end of the house on a charger in the guest bedroom. I’d grab it and call Doug once I was outside. Time for the cavalry. I was halfway through the dark passage before I remembered what I’d find: a phone unplugged.

I always unplugged the damn charger when we were away. It got too hot while charging, and I was worried it would short and burn.

I’d use the phone at the entrance and then get out to the cliffs.

I had reached the long hallway that passed from the living room to the kitchen. The vestibule and entrance-way were about halfway down the corridor that stretched ahead of me. I heard another burst of noise from the printer upstairs.

Then a gust of cold air caught my face.

I went still. The door was open! Or was it another draft? I’d stopped breathing. More cold air blew against my skin. My thoughts raced ahead. The tracks outside hadn’t been darker, they were deeper. They’d already gone by. My tracker was in the house!

I was too still. I had to buy seconds to get out, which meant I had to keep moving. I couldn’t let on I knew the killer was already inside.

As I made each step, I thought I’d be jumped.

I crept up to the entrance of the vestibule and peeked around the door frame.

Empty. The outer door was closed, but a cool, steady breeze came at me from where the pane of glass beside the lock used to be. I slipped into the vestibule but kept watching the dark corridor by backing to the door. With my left hand I made a grab for my boots; my right fumbled blindly behind me for the handle. The floor was wet with melted snow. I stepped on the missing pane of glass and crunched it. The suction cup that had removed it was still in place. If I cut my foot, I didn’t feel it.

Above me the whine of the printer stopped. The silence was as still as my breath.

I felt the thudding up the dark end of the hallway before I actually heard the running. I was more startled by a steady rising beep, familiar as a heartbeat, but grotesquely out of context here.

I got the door partly open behind me as a figure in a black ski suit, gloves, and mask neared the vestibule. The beeping increased its crescendo. The intruder was holding out two paddles, like lethal suction pods. They were connected by coils of wire to a small monitor slung on a shoulder strap. The beeping had reached a steady scream. The paddles were fully charged and ready to deliver. A single jolt and my heart would be a fibrillating sack, useless as a bag of squirming worms.

Before I could get out, the partly open door behind me was slammed hard into my back. It sent me flying face-down on the slate tiles at the boots of my attacker with the paddles.

The air flew out of my lungs with an involuntary roar. One of the boots came down on my head, and pain exploded over my skull and down my back while my throat burned with surges of vomit. A heavy knee dropped on the back of my legs. My sweater and shirt were ripped up my back to the bottom of my neck. The one with the boots—I could feel the heavy corrugated ridges on my scalp—plopped the paddles, cold with lubricant, on the back and side of my chest behind my heart.

I was going to die. I started to flail and squirm, but pretty weakly, given I couldn’t get my breath. I clutched feebly at the boot on my head. I thought of Janet, of my unborn son, and finally gurgled in enough air to sob, “Please!”

All I got was a gruff “Stand clear!”

The knees went off my legs and the boot lifted off my head, but the fall weight of the hooded creature bore down on the paddles, crushing my chest into the tiles. I still couldn’t breathe in. I weakly raised my head and spat out vomit. I started kicking jerkily with my legs but touched nothing. Drooling and sputtering more vomit, I strained my head up a few inches higher. Above me, my attacker stretched in a grotesque push-up, arms straight and pinning my chest to the floor with full body weight on the paddles. Legs akimbo and out of reach.

Behind the oval mouth hole in the ski mask, I could see a red leer.

A little flick from within the black eye slits invited me to turn my head farther around, to watch the paddle handles and the gloved hands. The screaming tone kept shrieking in readiness. Knowing I could see, the black-gloved thumbs moved with sadistic slowness to finger, to caress the red buttons.

Then a familiar voice, a voice I knew, the voice I expected, hissed, “So long. Doc.”

The thumbs hit the buttons before I could curse the name.

Chapter 16

The juice kicked through my chest. The whack of its force hit me like a train. White light shot up over my eyes and head. My ears recorded a loud
whump,
like kerosene rags igniting. Then they sealed off, filled with a hollow ringing.

An unsynchronized shock can restart a stalled heart, but it will stop a healthy heart cold. Mine was no longer beating. It had been reduced to a quivering, disorganized mass of muscle. But I wasn’t out. Not yet. That would, could, take thirty seconds. That was the point. I had enough time to know I was dead.

Shocked still, my heart no longer pumped blood. Air hunger mounted in my chest, then drove me to make useless gasping movements—my turn to endure, like a stranded fish, the longest seconds at the end of a life.

I didn’t like it. I felt no peaceful ascending and looking down at my remains. This hurt. I remembered the eyes of men and women I’d seen die over the years, awake and knowing as they shut down. I’d pampered my horror with the platitudes “It was quick; they didn’t suffer.” This wasn’t quick; the suffocation was slow, sure, and the tips of dying nerve ends hurt like hell. I strained for a gulp of air but got only futile twitchings from muscles that no longer worked.

I wanted the end, I wanted out of the agony. Please, I begged, let the blackness come. End it!

But that fight for air is the most powerful drive in the human body. Life begins and ends with it, and it’s as ancient as the first primitive gasp that hauled life out of the swamp. It wouldn’t let me go. There were no childhood memories, no rerun of my life; only that squeezing urge to breathe.

Vaguely, in spite of the pain, I realized that thirty seconds must have passed. Why wasn’t I dead?